


Vena Amoris

by therewasagirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: AU, Aftercare, F/M, implied BDSM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 14:10:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7225537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therewasagirl/pseuds/therewasagirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s shaking, panting hot breaths against her collarbones. Felicity holds on to him, until he can take a deep breath that won’t break on the way out. She feels fluttery on the inside too, all hot liquid and frail skin holding it together, but she holds him close, her hands keeping contact with him, skimming up his shoulders, his face, his hair. She needs to bring him down gently. As softly as the soothing lap of a wave over a white shore, without ever disturbing the sand. </p><p>He put himself in her hands trusting her to keep him safe, and safe is where she’ll keep him</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vena Amoris

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RosieTwiggs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosieTwiggs/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Lengths](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2284098) by [RosieTwiggs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosieTwiggs/pseuds/RosieTwiggs). 



> A big thank you, now that I’m coherent enough (it was 7 am when i posted this after pulling an all-nighter, because I’m a freak when it comes to finishing stuff when I’m about halfway through them) to honorthedeadbyfighting, flavinja (@bisexualfelicity) @reveureterrant and @n4r4nch4, who have listened to me fall apart and grit my teeth through my emotional constipation, and who have been the loveliest friends when I most needed them. Thank you guys ;) . And thank you to minachandler (@laurellanceisalive) and DeadlyBingo (@deadlybingo) for being so kind really, and for encouraging me to not be afraid to try writing something new.  
> And finally thank you to RosieTwiggs, whose work inspired me so much that i had to write something of my own.

_ _

 I _n a field. With the moon._  
And the dark. And the dirt.  
_With your mouth. And just one word:_  
_god god god._

_— **Daphne Gottlieb,** from “how you talk,” 15 Ways to Stay Alive_

He’s shaking, panting hot breaths against her collarbones. Felicity holds on to him, until he can take a deep breath that won’t break on the way out.

She feels fluttery on the inside too, all hot liquid and frail skin holding it together, but she holds him close, her hands keeping contact with him, skimming up his shoulders, his face, his hair. She took him as high as he could go and that was an experience unlike any other, but taking care of him now is as important as being careful and responsible with him before. She needs to bring him down gently. As softly as the soothing lap of a wave over a white shore, without ever disturbing the sand. He put himself in her hands trusting her to keep him safe, and safe is where she’ll keep him[[1]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7225537#_ftn1).

So Felicity keeps touching him, her hands as gentle as she can make them, to remind him without words that he's safe, that she’s still right there with him. This moment now is when he is as exposed as a raw nerve as he lies on his back against the covers, his breaths getting deeper, calmer.

Felicity brushes her fingers along his cheek, tells him in a whisper to keep his eye closed a little longer, take his time to get used to the light as she lifts his blindfold.

He does as he’s told.

She knew he would.  

She skims her fingers down his arm and he hums. Goosepumps rise up along his skin to chase her touch. Felicity threads her fingers through his hair and Oliver hums, turns his face to her hand when she cups his cheek. His breaths are evening out, settling and so are hers. But unlike him, she is focused, her attention sharp on him. His pulse is still fast and she knows that it will take him at least 20 more minutes to ride the adrenaline out of his system before he can enjoy the high of the endorphins, but he looks peaceful enough that if she didn’t know better, Felicity would have thought him asleep.

She leans in, brushes her cheek against his as her hand settles on his shoulder, her thumb rubbing his skin in circles.

‘I need you to sit up now, baby.’ With her lips close to his ear that he can feel her warm breath on it.

A shudder rips through him and he nods minutely, the tries to sit up. She helps him up, holding the back of his neck when his head slumps forward to rest on her bare shoulder for a moment.

That thread that connects them, pulls and all the tenderness inside her overflows until it spills out and around the both of them, overwhelming her and guiding her every thought at the same time. Felicity turns her head, kisses his cheek once, twice. Reaches carefully for the bottle of water she’d placed on the nightstand before, for exactly this moment. Oliver takes three long pulls from the straw before he blinks his eyes slowly open.

He looks blissed out, eyes heavy-lidded and glassy. Looking at him like this make her vibrate like a struck bell, the heat of satisfaction warming her bones, tightening the muscles of her abdomen and her thighs, liquefying somewhere in between.

‘I’m going to untie you now, Oliver.’

He blinks once, slowly, lets out a long breath and nods.

Felicity keeps one hand on his shoulder as she moves behind him to undo the ropes that she’d tied his forearms with behind his back.

It’s slow work: she’s at her most careful as she unwraps the binds, exposing the imprints the rope had left on his skin. The moment the ropes around his shoulders and chest come loose Oliver slumps forward with a groan and Felicity catches him, both arms around his shoulders, pulling him back to lean against her.

‘Shhh, it’s ok. I’ve got you, baby.’

Felicity wraps a blanket around his shoulders, presses herself close to his back, one hand directly over his heart. He’s still running hot, her fingers slip on his sweaty skin, but he’s going to start shivering at any moment now.

She urges him up. The way he stumbles on his feet as he walks is the closest Felicity will ever come to seeing Oliver drunk. She balks a little when he leans on her. It’s always a surprise how heavy he is, no matter how familiar she is with the feel and weight of him.

The bathroom is dimmer than their bedroom, only a few candles illuminating it once Felicity closes the door behind them. It’s baking hot in there, because that’s the way Oliver likes it. It helps him relax. The roll of the heat makes Felicity’s toes curl in as it settles over her like a heady embrace. She helps Oliver sit down on the wide edge of the tub and as she fills the bath, and then steps behind him, works her hands against the muscles of his shoulders, loosening the numbness immobility had certainly left him with, telling him how good he is and how well he did. There are fine tremors still running through him and every once in awhile he’ll start tensing, so she traces her fingers between his shoulder-blades, up his neck, frames his face as she steps in front of him.

‘Relax.’ She reminds him, her voice as soft as it’s firm.

Felicity takes her own deep breath, slow and steady in and out, and he does the same, mirroring her. His shoulders drop, his forehead comes forward to rest on her breastbone.

The water is just on the cautious side of too-warm when Felicity urges Oliver into the tub and goes in after him. She sits high on his lap, her thighs framing his, the water lapping at her waist. Oliver settles into the water, his head laid on the edge, cushioned on a towel. Hot showers and, more rarely, hot baths are one of the few things Oliver likes indulging in. Just hot water in general. ( _It really hadn’t taken her too long to know why – she has excellent imagination_.)

Felicity uses her own body-wash to clean the both of them up. He likes it better that way, familiar scents to ground him into the moment. To her. She presses her hand over his heart from time to time, in a familiar caress, and also to feel his heartbeat. It’s still a bit faster than normal, but Oliver seems mostly relaxed. Mostly.

When he jerks, his whole body tensing as if he’d been on the edge of sleep and dreamt of falling, Felicity is a bit startled, but not much. The way he sits up and wraps his hands around both her arms to hold her in place ( _hold himself to the only steadiness he can perceive in that moment_ ), doesn’t surprise her either.

She keeps her voice even, steady. ‘It’s alright.’ Keeps touching him, one hand over his flying heart, the other on his cheek. ‘You’re okay. This is okay. Breathe.’

He does, blinking rapidly as if he can’t quite see her well.

That happens too. The last of the adrenaline in his system is burning off and the endorphins are relaxing his optical nerve. Sometimes he can't see well for some minutes, sometimes he feels like he’s falling. She's read about it all, and they've been through this enough times that she is calm as she decides what to do.

When he can’t trust one of his senses, then she’ll help him take it out of the equation and trust the others.

Trust _her_.

‘Close your eyes, hon.’ Felicity tells him in a whisper.

He does. His hands are tight around her upper arms, but he closes his eyes and Felicity feels her heart clenching with the weight of that trust. She’s never not aware of it, and thanks him by leaning close, pressing both hands on his pecks and her cheek to his, tightens her thighs around his hips to make him feel her holding him firm.

‘I’m right here. You can feel me.’ They’re chest to chest when she takes one of his hands in hers and cradles them between their bodies. ‘You’re not falling, you’re not going anywhere.’

‘My head is spinning.’ He says, voice thick, rasping against his throat on the way out.

Felicity kisses the corner of his mouth. ‘I know. it’s okay.’

She knows the feeling. She’s felt it too – he’s given it to her. That incomparable rush that is looking at him with his head thrown back, eyes closed; of being able to take him to a place where he could let everything go and just receive, and staying with him there until she made him sob with pleasure and forget everything but what he was feeling. What she was making him feel.

Yes, Felicity knows the feeling… ( _Even now a soft shiver climbs her spine and thrills every nerve on her skin at the memory of it_.)

‘Just let go, it’s okay.’

Oliver exhales a long breath. Felicity threads her fingers through his hair again and feels him loosening with her every word. With gentle pressure, she pushes him so that he can lay his head on the towel at the edge of the tub again. Oliver goes willingly, and takes her with him, still not having let go.

It takes him long moments, but the next time he opens his eyes to look at her, Felicity knows he’s actually seeing her. He slides his hands down her arms, her ribs and waist, rests them on her hipbones where his thumb traces them back and forth. Every line of his body and the hazy, soft look in his eyes tells her that he’s at ease.

She gave him that.

It makes Felicity smile. ‘Hey.’

The way his lips curve up, the way he watches her from under his lashes and heavy lids, is so soft that it makes her heart flutter and ache in the best way, warmth blooming in her chest, loosening her limbs.

‘Hi.’

‘D’you want some more water?’

He shakes his head, keeps looking at her. Felicity watches back carefully, trying to get a read on him, on what he might need, but he’s just smiling. His contentment is like a warm and hazy scent that comes off him and it’s everywhere, from the peaceful look on his face to the relaxed line of his shoulders and how his fingers are so lazy against her skin, beneath the surface of the water.

She sits up then and starts washing her own hair as he watches, palms skating up and down her thighs, occasionally pression flat against her belly. He helps her rinse her hair out, combs his fingers through the wet strands after he puts the conditioner on and washes it out gently, holding the showerhead over her so carefully that not even a stray drop of water makes it to her eyes. Felicity returns the favor and he almost falls asleep second time.

They stay in the water till their fingers prune, but the moment she feels it cooling down, Felicity leans back pulls the stopper.

She lifts herself off the tub, Oliver’s eyes lazily following the drops of water rolling down her skin. When she holds out her hand he takes it, and lifts himself up too. She wraps his favorite bathrobe around him, a huge fluffy thing that Felicity always likes to cuddle into, and lets him dry the extra water from her hair when he reaches for the towel. He’s so gentle she barely feels it.

When they’re in their room again, Felicity hands him a tall glass of strawberry and lemon juice and half a bar of chocolate. He’s rung out, so spent that he’s having trouble keeping his eyes open, but she’d rather err on the side of caution. She pushes aside the safety blanket she’d draped on the bed earlier and helps him get beneath the covers. He’s flushed and looks about halfway asleep already, but doesn’t close his eyes until she’s in bed next to him. Felicity reaches out, brushes the tips of her fingers against his temple, to the impossibly soft skin under his eyes. His eyes slip shut, the long lashes she’s always envied fluttering against her fingertips.

‘Sleep.’

After he wraps his one arm around her to pull her closer, he does.

-

Oliver wakes up slowly. There’s no urgency; no dreams chasing him on the way up to conscious thought, no worries pressing against the back of his head the moment he gets there. There’s just warmth. Warmth and a pair of lips he knows making their way from the back of his neck to his ear.

Time to wake up. He knows it before she says it.

Though he doesn’t really know what time it is exactly, the drapes of their room are still firmly shut.

It’s 6 pm Felicity tells him, before he’s even asked. And he calculates that there is just enough time to have dinner, get ready and show up at the benefit that had been the organizational bane of Oliver’s existence ever since the City Council decided to host it. Thinking about it now though, he doesn’t feel the sense of dread that had become his constant companion these past few weeks. Maybe it’s because it’s almost over, or maybe because the calmness that warms him from within runs so deep that he thinks nothing could upset it.

‘How are you feeling?’

Oliver turns so that they’re side by side and takes a careful look at her. She’s all shiny eyes and rosy lips, hair dried into a mess of curls all around her head. He reaches out to touch her, run a hand along her arm, beneath the strap of her tank top, to smooth over the top of her breast, right over where her heart is beating.  Felicity smiles and slides closer to his side, linking one arm over middle and her leg over his. She’s in his favorite pair of pink boyshorts; they have ‘sweet’ printed out in the back and Oliver has always found that word stretched out over her ass very appropriate.

How _is_ he feeling?

Oliver kisses her by way of answering. Kisses her slow and with intent, trying to _show_ her how he feels, because he has no words for it.

She kisses back as if he understands every unspoken words and it crosses his mind right then that they need no language but their own. That this too is a shade of love and it means what love has always meant to him: her name, safe behind his lips, in his hands, between their bodies.

Felicity goes downstairs to set the table for dinner, Oliver cleans up their room, putting everything back into place as meticulously as Felicity had arranged it for them.

When he got her text that morning, he hadn’t been able to think about anything else but her and what he would find once he got back home, so much so that every now and then he had to take some time and calm down. By the time noon came around and he stood in front of their front door, he’d been half hard already and shivering with anticipation.

Oliver stretches, feels the ache of his body, that wrung out feeling that is both more and less than exhaustion. It had been worth it.

When he goes downstairs after he straightens out their room, Felicity is setting the table in her pajamas, hair in a bun at the top of her head. He watches her move around, watches her glasses slip a little down her nose as she sets down the bowl of salad. She scrunches up her nose, pushes them back up with the back of her index finger. Oliver can’t help the smile he gets when he recalls how she always groans in irritation whenever her finger slips and touches the glass.

She looks up in that moment and when she sees him smiling she smiles back.

Two more steps and then he’s close enough that she only has to tilt her head up to kiss him.

It’s supposed to be soft, fleeting. It’s not.

They eat side by side, half turned towards each other. Oliver knows that the way her foot slides up and down the back of his calf every now and then is deliberate. That Felicity knows he needs contact - needs to touch and be touched always, but most especially after a scene, when he still feels like he’s floating and she’s the only anchor he knows. He feels needy sometimes, as if he’s asking too much, but then he dismisses it. He trusts Felicity and in the cradle of that trust there is the safety of knowing she would tell him, if there ever came a point close to ‘too much’. He’s trusted her that way long before she said ‘yes’ to running away and leaving everything behind.

They’ve kept saying ‘yes’ to each other since then in the strangest ways. Sometimes even by just standing there, ready to give the other what they thought would be scary, but holding it in their palms anyway[[2]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7225537#_ftn2).

He eats everything on his plate and watches Felicity clean out her own. She asks him about the scene, what he liked, if there was anything he didn’t, anything he’d like to do again. If he wants something again in the same way, or differently. They talk about everything, go over everything, because Felicity likes to know things, likes to be prepared, especially when it comes to him. They start cleaning out the table together, and the moment he has his hands free, Oliver kisses her again, this time to say ‘thank you’. He says it words too, softly against her lips with his hands cupped around her face. But words cannot tell her how ‘thank you’ feels inside him, or why it lives there. It cannot describe the subtle nuances of relief and how the peace she gives him makes every voice inside his head quieter, how it makes the world at the edges of his vision softer. How it tugs at every string of his emotions and ties them all back to her and that is why she pulls him with her with every move, every look, always aware.

He doesn’t have words to say those things, but that kiss might, because after all, they only ever needed their own language.

Later in their room, he puts on the tuxedo that she’d picked for him, tries to do something decent with his hair as by his side, Felicity tames her curls into softer waves with a hot iron. As he stands there in the bathroom with her, the cuffs of his shirts still undone, Oliver catches a whiff of her scent on his skin. He brings his wrist to his nose and smells the citrusy scent of her bodywash on him.

It makes him seriously consider not covering up that scent with anything else.

Felicity laughs at the thought of half the politicians of the state meeting Mayor Oliver Queen while he smells like his girlfriend. Oliver can’t really see the problem with that, even as he grabs his aftershave, but he’d never object to her laughing. ( _he’d bottle the sound of it up and get drunk on it every night, if he could_[ _[3]_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7225537#_ftn3) _)_

He gets ready before she does, maybe a bit intentionally. He wants to watch her move around a room that is theirs and smells like her as she puts herself together piece by piece. It’s something of a favorite pastime. He likes that he can, and the feeling will apparently never go away. It only ever highlights how intimate it is for him to see her like this, even though he doesn’t understand every secret behind her choices. ( _Why that perfume, why that lipstick with that nailpolish._ ) He doesn’t want to, though. He just wants to be there watching them happen.

He’s very silent in the corner as she slips into her panties and pulls stockings up her legs, fixes her garter. The room expands, quieting just as his focus sharpens and Felicity is the gravity point of it all. She moves and he moves, as if she pulls him. He watches her in front of the mirror, carefully applying her makeup, leaning towards the glass. Felicity and her reflection, like two different women meeting out of time, wearing the exact same shade of lipstick.

She walks to him, her eyes aware and smiling and drapes his bowtie over his shoulder, fingers skimming down his chest and abdomen as she moves beyond him, into their closet where her dress is hanging. His muscles twitch where she touches him, his body follows her, turning towards her, watching her go. Watching the round shoulders and the dip of her back, the swell of her ass.

This is his favorite kind of wanting. There are many kinds and almost all of them converge in the way looking at Felicity always feels like waking up, but _this…_ there is no disruption in this. It’s desire and it’s even, smoothed out as the surface of a deep deep lake. It’s a kind of wanting that seeps into every moment without disrupting any of them, slow and deep-staining, ever since he opened his eyes. It’s wanting like breathing.

Felicity walks out of the closet in a floor length red dress, her eyes alight and cheeks flushed. He wants to kiss the red right off her lips and he has a feeling she wants to stain him with that lipstick all over just as much. ( _some days he knows how she wants to be touched just from the shade she’s wearing_ ) She turns for him to zip it up her back. Oliver is aware of everything, the warmth of her skin, the heady scent of her neck and the smooth silk beneath his hands. He’s awake and floating, both, an almost dreamlike state. When she moves out of his hands with a mischievous smile, Oliver knows she wants to keep him there.

Throughout their whole car ride to Starling City’s Museum, Felicity smiles and takes his hand, touches his thigh, and Oliver wonders ‘ _what do you want, what do you need_ ’, ‘ _what can I give you_ ’, _‘how’_.

They enter the gala and the evening starts. They meet people, smile and talk, and all the while she’s there at the back of his mind. He watches her as if she’s going to give him the answers and Felicity looks at him from the other corner of the room and bites her lip.

Maybe she will. Maybe he’ll have to work for it.

He puts the wine glass down, fiddles with his cufflinks, straightens his jacket as he takes a deep breath through his nose.

The whole night passes in a blur. He meets many people that he’s been wanting to for a long time and charms his way through them with sincere intent. There had been a reason why this thing had stressed him out so much, but now Oliver hardly remembers it. He’s calm through it, sure. And always aware of where in the room Felicity is, what she’s doing, where her hands are, if she’s looking at him.

He dances with her twice. Two slow songs, a laugh in the face of the Oliver Queen who didn’t dance.

The night is an astounding success as Thea and Alex take the time to tell him, and Oliver is happy about that, but when it’s finally over and they get back to the car that will take them home, the whole night becomes a collective of moments spent with other people and not Felicity, apart and not together. Moments between them leaving the loft and finally getting back. And yes, the gala was the completion of weeks of work - Oliver is walking two inches off the ground because it was a complete hit. But it also feels like an interruption.

He opens the door for her, watches her set her purse down as he closes it softly.

‘Don’t turn on the lights.’

It’s soft, but Oliver hears it as if she’s whispered it in his ear. And no matter how familiar it is, he’s still not prepared for the rush of sensation that comes with her tone. His breathing deepens, evens out, even as his heart starts beating a bit faster.

She walks further in, up the stairs slowly and he as he follows at her same pace, he knows she will like it slow this time. He can tell just by her step. But then her hands come around to the back of her dress to unzip it and Felicity lets it fall down on the stairs as she keeps climbing them without pause… and suddenly Oliver is not so sure.

The thrill is a rope that pulls tighter around him, winding him up and keeping him together at the same time.

He wants to rush but he doesn’t. He picks up her dress instead, the warmth of her body still clinging to the watery fabric. He picks up a discarded black heel a few steps up, and the other one just by the door of their room.

She’s leaning against her work table, the single lamp behind her highlighting her silhouette against the dark. When he sees her there, Oliver understands that the chair is for him to sit on. He’s proven right when she steps between his open knees the moment he’s seated.

Her hands slip beneath his jacket and Oliver lets her take it off him. She’s more careful with it than she was with her dress: she drapes it on the back of the chair, her lace-cupped breasts so close he could just turn his head to kiss the soft swell of one.

‘The garter stays.’ She tells him softly as she undoes his bowtie and slips the first button of his shirt undone and bends her knee to rest it high against his thigh. ‘The panties go.’

So Oliver does just that, undoing the bows of her garter ever so slow and slipping her panties down her legs, tracing the back of her thighs and the curve of her ass as he ties the stockings back up. She shivers and he wants to lean in and fill his hands with her, but he doesn't. Instead he lets out a long breath and watches the skin above her breasts break out in goodpumps.  

Instead of slipping on his lap like he’d thought she would though, Felicity hops on the desk again and just looks at him. Oliver holds her eye, waiting.

_What do you want? Tell me. Anything… anything…_

He’s vibrating with need to give it to her.

There’s a smile she’s hiding, right there at the corner of her lips. Her eyes are soft, calm.

One foot traces its way up his leg and comes to rest on his knee. Oliver wraps one hand around her ankle to keep her there, his thumb tracing the shape of her toes, overcome with a tenderness that punches him in the chest out of nowhere, before he digs his fingers firmly up the arch of her foot. ( _She loves wearing those heels, but they hurt_.) Felicity closes her eyes at the feeling and sighs deeply, her head lolling on her shoulder. He’s been half hard because of her for the better part of the night and the way she’s spoken to him before, seeing her drop that dress like it was an afterthought, had taken him the rest of the way; but it’s that contented sigh she gives him then that makes Oliver’s mouth go dry.

He’s been trying to find a single word that describes _‘I thought never would, but for you I did_[[4]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7225537#_ftn4)’ ever since she got into the car with him earlier, leaving the gala, but there is no such word. There is only what she wants, and that is the beginning and the end of him in that moment.

What she wants ends up being on the bed, with him kneeling between her open legs ( _on his knees is how he likes to give thanks, often and well, with her open, flushed and beautiful in front of his as a picture_ ).

She tilts her head, fingers skimming along the edge of her garter, and he starts unbuttoning his shirt. Her eyes are intent on his fingers, so he makes it slow as one foot traces up and down his thigh and every time closer to where he’s straining against his slack; which will have to wait. Wait as long as it has to, because he has to kiss her thigh where it’s covered by her stocking ( _inky-dark, as dark as her eyes with their pupils blow wide with want; want he wants to drown in_ ) and a bit higher where it’s not, ( _her bottom lip trapped against her teeth_ ) and higher still, where she’s wet.

And that is where he stays until he’s made her arch off the bed twice. Until she shoves both her hands through his hair to keep him there, and a little longer, the way she likes it, until her thighs are shaking.

He  glances up her body as she arches of the bed, loud, obscene and unashamed, and its the closes to holy Oliver will ever set his eyes on. That’s it, that’s her. She’s the taste of scripture.

She pushes him away and curls to her side hands between her legs as she shakes, whimpering out the last tremors of her pleasure. He can’t help but touch her. Can’t resist, not after the way her shallow breaths turn to hums when she feels him. She turns and opens her arms for him again. She wants to hold him and to be held, and there is nothing better than giving her that too. ( _To be held by light is all he’s ever wanted after all, in a body that remembers his body_.) He wants to give: everything, all of it, whatever he has left. Tonight is that kind of night, where he feels as if his beginning and end and every breath in between will exist for her satisfaction.

It’s with hands that shake of that stainless devotion that he touches her again. She looks at him and she knows - the same way she’s always known. And it’s with hands made rough by years of digging up his words that she frames his face, kisses him deep and lets him in.

His whole body has become one exposed nerve, aching to touch her. Everything else between her skin and his gets lost, ripped away by both their frantic hands, shaking of a need that came from nowhere, passing from him to her through their kisses. They’re full to the brim with each other, it almost hurts when they come together, pleasure slicing through them, though they’re barely moving. He can’t breathe so he searches for his breath in her neck, on her shoulder and her lips, forgets himself in her arms, kissing her jawline and her collarbones, moving slow and pressing deep until she throws her head back and sobs with the feel of it as she plants her feet on the bed and grinds into him.

He’s lost to the sight of her, lost on her lips and between her legs, lost when she flips them around and sets her own rhythm. Slow still, her hands catching his hands, holding them above his head and pressing down, fingers threading together the same way she threads him apart with every movement. Her breaths fans warm on his face, lips close enough to brush with his, sparkling sensation that he feels all the way to where he’s inside her.

They’ve both forgotten how to kiss. He thinks he’s forgotten how to breathe, and if it were not for how his moans mix with hers, he’d believe it too.

But he hasn’t forgotten. He has a body and it’s with her body, the best place it could ever be. Anywhere, in any place, at any time, the two of them would always be like this: in the dark with her mouth on his mouth and one word, in his head ( _Felicity, Felicity, Felicity_ ), the closes thing to a prayer he might believe. Until they thread apart and lick themselves off the ceiling, earth and gravity forgotten. Until the world focuses to the tip of a needle and they both break time, the smash echoing as loud as a hitched breath and two eyes finding each other in the dark.

The silence that comes after is of the kind that presses down, pushing their sweaty bodies against each other. She’s loose and heavy on top of him, like a living blanket. He holds her tighter, feels his head spin as she catches her breath against his neck. He pushes her sweaty hair away from her face, turns his head and kisses her cheek, as softly as he might her lips, her hands. Traces his hands up her arms, down her spine and she stretches over him, content smiling, and Oliver feels himself fall even deeper into whatever it is that has been keeping him so warm. If he sees small lights at the edges of his vision he doesn’t worry. He turns them around, slow, till they’re side by side in the dark and in the quiet, breathing together.

So many times before, they’d fallen, wounded, on the places that were meant for revelation[[5]](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7225537#_ftn5)… but not this time. Not here. Here is where they stay tender. And warm, with a blanket thrown over them, eyes already heavy with sleep and the best kind of exhaustion. And together.

* * *

 

[1] From Lord of the rings – Treebeard says this to the Merry and Pippin.

[2] Kelli Russell, from Hourglass Museum; “Self-Portrait with Reader”

[3] Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows                                                                                                                                               

[4] Via  http://4am-reflections.tumblr.com/

[5] \- Alejandra Pizarnik, from “Paths of the Mirror,”


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